Bush Gets Credit, Clout for Leading GOP Sweep

Ever since he saw his father’s presidency collapse in 1992, George W. Bush has argued that a president must sometimes invest some “political capital” if he wants to watch it grow.

By staking his prestige on this year’s congressional campaign, Bush proved his own theory: He risked some capital, but the investment paid off big.

Republicans and Democrats alike credited Bush on Wednesday for a good measure of the GOP’s unexpected success. “It was a reflection of a very popular president who broke all records in terms of his willingness to go around the country and campaign for his candidates,” said a deflated Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota.

As a result, Bush now appears significantly more powerful than during the first two years of his presidency, with a freer hand on domestic issues such as tax cuts and international issues such as Iraq.

“George W. Bush has always benefited from being underestimated, just as Ronald Reagan was,” said Kenneth M. Duberstein, Reagan’s last White House chief of staff. “But there came a time when Reagan could no longer be underestimated. That time may just have arrived for Bush.

“To be an effective president, you need to be both feared and revered, here and abroad,” Duberstein said. “After this election, Democrats obviously don’t want Bush to come into their districts anymore....

“Overseas, people now have to perceive the United States as Bushland. And that will strengthen his hand around the world.”

Foreign diplomats agreed. Several, refusing to be quoted by name, said they expected the election to strengthen Bush’s willingness to launch military action against Iraq.

White House spokesmen said the president’s foreign policy positions would not be affected by his newly strengthened political standing.

But other U.S. and foreign officials said the GOP victory could only bolster Bush’s hawkish position on Iraq.

“The likelihood that the American president will feel even more self-confident about his own views than prior to the election is great,” Karsten Voigt, a top aide to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, told Reuters news agency.

During the campaign, Bush often invoked the war on terrorism and his confrontation with Iraq. These are unusual issues to raise in a midterm congressional election, because such contests are normally fought over domestic concerns.

But there was political calculation in Bush’s strategy. Democrats complained that he was focusing on war to divert attention from the faltering economy; Republicans said he was merely reminding voters that they approved of his leadership in the war on terrorism.

“I think a lot of people were concerned about national security,” Daschle said. “We weren’t able to break through on economic issues.”

“Bush and [political aide] Karl Rove did something quite brilliant,” said Samuel Popkin, a political scientist at UC San Diego and former advisor to several Democratic campaigns. “They raised the president’s profile in a midterm campaign, they talked about foreign policy, and they benefited from it.”

The only parallel in recent history, he said, was the congressional election of 1962, shortly after the Cuban missile crisis, when President Kennedy campaigned as a foreign policy leader and held Democratic losses to a minimum.

The White House struck a deliberately modest tone Wednesday, offering what spokesman Ari Fleischer called “a touch of graciousness” in place of overt boasts of victory.

The modesty extended to the president’s plans for the remaining two years of his first term, but that was partly because Bush and his aides believe in focusing on a small number of priorities at a time and partly because they have not decided fully how they want to exploit their new congressional majority.

“The president has two major priorities for the future, and they involve the protection of the homeland, including our national security, and strengthening America’s economy,” Fleischer told reporters several times.

Pressed for a more detailed agenda, he listed a series of unfinished items from the last two years: the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security, a terrorism insurance bill, a new national energy policy and a larger role for religious charities in government-funded social services.

On two major initiatives that Bush once espoused in principle, overhauls of the Social Security system and the federal income tax, Fleischer ducked. “It’s too soon to say,” he said.

If history is any guide, one result of the president’s new congressional majority will be increased pressure from conservatives for some of their cherished goals, including more tax cuts and an end to the corporate income tax.

“When the Democrats controlled the Senate, Bush had an excuse for not delivering everything the conservatives wanted,” Popkin noted. “Now he has to deliver.”

On the other hand, noted political scientist Fred I. Greenstein of Princeton University, every Republican in the Senate “now owes a debt to Bush.”

“Who knows whether his campaign trips were any more responsible for this outcome than a rooster’s crow is for the sunrise?” he said. “But he put himself on the line, and he gets the credit.

“This is the opposite of what we’ve come to expect of a presidency,” Greenstein noted. “Most recent presidencies started out strong, ran into trouble and fell apart. This one started in doubt, in a contested election, and has only gotten stronger. It’s as if we’re playing the videotape backwards.”

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On the way out

Virtually all congressional incumbents on Tuesday’s ballot won; here are the few who lost:

Senate

Jean Carnahan -- D-Mo.

Max Cleland -- D-Ga.

Tim Hutchinson -- R-Ark.

House

* George W. Gekas -- R-Pa.

Felix J. Grucci Jr. --- R-N.Y.

Bill Luther -- D-Minn.

* James H. Maloney -- D-Conn.

Constance A. Morella -- R-Md.

* David D. Phelps -- D-Ill.

* Ronnie Shows -- D-Miss

Karen L. Thurman -- D-Fla.

* Ran against incumbent from the other major political party, due to redistricting. Note: Rep. Henry Bonilla (R-Texas) is in a tight race with incomplete results